Jackson (“Insane Asylum”)

By Lindsay Bourgeois

General Context

Jackson is a small town in East Feliciana Parish in South Louisiana, whose name is synonymous with the mental institution located there. Built in 1847 and opened in 1848, the institution is now called the East Louisiana State Hospital. First known as the Louisiana State Insane Asylum, it is one of the oldest mental institutions still operating today. Over the centuries, various terms have been used to refer to the patients housed in institutions like the one in Jackson.

Since their creation, these institutions have carried a contentious connotation with the use of the term asylum. Representing confinement and restraint, asylums have historically functioned as a form of societal control, particularly since their introduction in the U.S. during the nineteenth century. Individuals who acted against societal norms were often placed in these facilities and silenced during “the Great Confinement,” even if they may not actually be mentally ill (Foucault 44). This practice was especially prevalent with women (Schur 197).

Connection to Novel

Trapped in a doomed marriage and seeking freedom, Louise Bonbon, a character in Gaines’s Of Love and Dust, is sent to the mental asylum in Jackson at the end of the novel. The second half of the plot follows the tragic love affair between Louise and Marcus. As the pair attempt to flee the plantation, Marcus is killed by Louise’s husband. Gaines writes that Louise is then sent “to a hospital in New Orleans. Not long after that, they took her to Jackson – the insane asylum” (Gaines 278).

Understanding the contentious nature of women being condemned to institutions like the one in Jackson helps deepen our understanding of the roles these facilities played as agents of societal control. We know Gaines deliberately wrote Louise’s character the way he did. In an interview, Gaines notes that Louise may “not have it all up there” (qtd. in Simpson 178). This suggests that Louise’s mad fate was intentional and embedded in the plot of the novel from its beginning.